Despite Congress and overwhelming public comments to the contrary, the BATFE have pressed forward with revised “sporting purposes” criteria to restrict the import of shotguns (that BATFE does not want you to have access to). The terminology and its abuse over the years has been well documented. The effect of this abuse is what we need to consider. Looking at recent history, in 1989, BATFE was compelled to halt importation of numerous semi automatic rifles on this determination:

The “study” conducted was by a “working group” - basically ATF set up a ‘Star Chamber’ like death panel for your 2nd Amendment rights. These rifles became unavailable literally overnight. Some of our community have undersold the current shotgun study because Congress placed restrictions on ATF denying import applications. This is temporary at best.

You can see from the pdf reports that BATFE loves to play numbers games. They like to compare “practical shooting” and specifically USPSA to hunting. But hunting isn’t a sport, is it? A recreational activity? Yes, a tradition that built this country? Absolutely. ATF studies however refuse to recognize plinking as a sport so what validity is there to compare hunting to USPSA? Instead, USPSA should be compared to Curling. An Olympic sport with defined rules for competition, membership and competitive events.

Many of you may not have heard of curling. If you haven’t, it’s not an exercise in lifting 12 ounces or a pint at a time. The relevant point here is that it’s an Olympic sport, along with some shooting competitions, and the USA Curling association reports 16,000 members. ATF attributes 19,000 to USPSA. Take a few moments to read the ATF reports and awe at the staggering amount of time it must have taken to fabricate these justifications, achieve a consensus among their ‘Second Amendment Start Chamber’ and produce those voluminous reports. This is just a sampling of the lengths BATFE will go to in order to suppress your rights. It’s not going to be easy to stop this kind of BATFE abuse, but failing to act will lead to more restrictions. Make no mistake that these actions affect ALL gun owners. Even if you only own certain kinds of firearms, is the last gun you bought exactly like the first gun you bought? We will need to be unified in our efforts to end this kind of BATFE abuse.